The Windsor Police Service saw an increase in calls but a decrease in violent crimes in 2021.
Police responded to 77, 506 calls for service in 2021, a 15 per cent increase from 2020. Violent crimes saw a decrease of five per cent overall. There were seven homicide investigations in 2021, up from three in 2020.
Each year, crime statistics are tracked and analyzed to help determine how best to allocate police resources in the future.
"The last two years have been very difficult to extract data that we can use to predict how we should allocate our resources given the pandemic scenario, the changes in the law, the emergency measures that were in place," said Deputy Chief Jason Bellaire. "I think it's forever going to have an asterisk beside these two years and it is going to be complicated to root through all the data that we have, based on these two years that were basically a statistical anomaly for the most part."
Police attribute an increased amount of intimate partner violence in 2021 to the continued quarantines and lockdowns. In 2021, those crimes were up 24 per cent compared to the five year average.
The data also shows a decrease in youth-related crime for the last two years. There were 223 youths involved in a crime in 2021, down 23 per cent from 2020 and 36 per cent from 2019.
